How on Earth do you grow an online business? And where does email marketing fit in?

This week on the show we talk about the 5 different things you need to do to grow your business.

So if you've got this awesome product or service, you put together an offer, you've been telling people about it, but you don't quite manage to sell as many as you thought you were going to sell, this will help you work out which piece of the puzzle you're missing. 

But there's a bit of a twist at the end...  

SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:

(1:03) What's the deal with Kennedy and tomatoes?

(3:12) Where does email fit it in your online business and why are things not working?

(5:21) Why you need a platform to grow your business.

(8:21) How do you even pick your platform?

(8:50) Why you need to start email marketing. Yesterday.

(12:30) Why a conversion mechanism is the third piece of the puzzle.

(14:17) Have you thought about how you're going to deliver 'the thing'?

(16:45) The last piece of the puzzle - the resell phase.

(17:44) Why launch a referral affiliate scheme. (20:49) Subject line of the week.

1. Choose a platform to grow your small business online

The first thing you're going to need to grow your online business is a platform. This is the place where you find people who could potentially buy from you, engage in your services, or hire you. 

Your platform is where people are gathering - where they find out about you. It could be your podcast, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, your Facebook group, an event, you being a guest speaker somewhere - you name it. 

But if you haven't got a platform yet (and you're not leveraging someone else's), then you don't have an audience who will buy your products or services. 

Take us, for example. We started things off with the podcast and then created a Facebook group that we linked back to the podcast. Now we're also on Twitter and various other channels. But like everyone, we had to start somewhere.

So where should you be? 

Whichever platform you pick for your business is up to you. None of them are better than any others. Just pick the platform that you work best with, get good at it, do it consistently, and build your audience there. Nothing works or doesn't work in and of itself - it's about what people do to make stuff work for them. 

2. Start doing email marketing

Email marketing is the next piece of the puzzle. Once you've grabbed your audience's attention, you want them to give your their email address and give you permission to get in touch more often. 

It's through email that you build a deeper connection with people. Plus, email is the highest return on investment marketing activity you can do as a business. You can sell more stuff with email than anything else you do. And there's no equivalent - unless you count the very expensive messenger bots or SMS marketing. Email marketing is simply more efficient, more effective, deeper, and more personal than any of the other business growth strategies you could ever think of employing. Fact. 

And let's not forget that email works in a two-way direction. Because you can move people from your original platform onto your email list, but you can also use your email list to send people to more platforms. We do that. People go from our podcast to our email list, and from there we send them to our Facebook group, for example. 

Another benefit of building an email list is that, unlike with other platforms, you own the...